Company says customers are lapping up its new non-spill plastic milk bottles.

One of modern life's mysteries is why milk bottles are so poorly designed. Man has walked on the moon, but failed to create a plastic bottle that can be picked up easily and pours without spilling.

But Dairy Crest believes it has come up with such a bottle, which will hit supermarket shelves in the coming weeks. It is subtly different from the standard design and also uses 15pc less plastic, in a bid to cut down the £50m the company spends every year on bottles.

The company, buffeted by rising farmgate milk prices and supermarkets refusing to accept price rises, has set a target to reduce its annual cost base by £20m, and cheaper bottles is part of that mission.

The handle, rather than being positioned at the centre of the back of the bottle, is in the corner of the back – a tweak, the company claims, that makes the bottle more rigid, less likely to fall over, and also far easier to grab from the fridge.

Crucially, the bottle does not have such large corners at the base. The plastic is not pushed into the corners as much as in a standard bottle, helping to cut down on plastic. Though the base looks less stable, the company inisisted that in an initial trial of 30,000 the bottles came with prominent stickers urging consumers to complain, and they did not receive a single call.